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French, British dramas in line-up for Berlin Film Festival
2007-01-22
A British drama starring Cate Blanchett and an English-language offering by French director Francois Ozon will screen at the Berlin International Film Festival next month, organizers said. Blanchett teams up with fellow Oscar winner Judi Dench in Richard Eyre's screen adaptation of the Zoe Heller novel "Notes on a Scandal" about a teacher at a London school who seduces a pupil. Ozon, the acclaimed director of "5x2" and "8 Women", also drew inspiration from English literature for "Angel", a period drama about the decadent life of a lowly-born young woman who becomes a novelist and London socialite. Based on a novel of the same title, it is Ozon's third film with Charlotte Rampling and also stars Sam Neill and Romola Garai. It is among 22 films competing for the Golden Bear prize for best picture at the February 8-18 festival. Organizers also named two Chinese and Latin American entries as they unveiled the full competition line-up. "The Year My Parents Went On Holiday" by Cao Hamburger tells the story of a Brazilian boy whose parents are detained by the country's military regime in the 1970s. Argentinian director Ariel Rotter returns to the Berlinale six years after "Solo por hoy" (Just for Today) with "El otro" (The Other) a film about a man who decides to change his identity. "Ping Gua" (Lost in Beijing) deals with the fears and longings of residents of the city, while the independent US film "When a Man Falls in the Forest", starring Sharon Stone, examines the isolation of people in small-town America. The second Chinese film in competition, "Tuya's Marriage" by Wang Quan'an recounts a woman's unlikely quest to find a new husband to take care of her and her sickly ex-husband. Director Zhang Lu, who scored an art-house hit with the poetic "Grain in Ear" in 2005, returns to the Asian countryside with French-Korean co-production "Desert Dream", about a farmer, a North Korean refugee and a soldier stuck in a draught-stricken village. "Beaufort", an Israeli entry, looks at the hardship faced by the last army unit stationed in southern Lebanon before Israel's withdrawal. The film is one of 19 competition entries which will have their world premieres at the festival, which kicks off with a biopic on the life of iconic French singer Edith Piaf, "La Vie En Rose". Other pictures screening at the Berlinale announced earlier are Robert De Niro's "The Good Shepherd", "The Good German" starring George Clooney and "I'm A Cyborg But That's OK" by South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook. Veteran French director Jacques Rivette will unveil "Ne touchez pas la hache" (Don't Touch the Axe), his second film based on a Balzac novella after the 1991 hit "La Belle Noiseuse" (The Beautiful Troublemaker).
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